Ships & Modules

Have you looked at the Hel? when i had mine i was constantly outrunning the rest of my fleet, was almost always the first to land on grid and the first to align, and i was fit full tank. the niddy isn't exactly slow either, had one that was keeping up with an ahac fleet bouncing between gates, fc actually forgot that it was a cap for a sec and ordered it to hold on the gate and not jump through with the fleet, was rather amusing...


anywho, as for fixing minnie caps:


Niddy - as a few others have said, swap a low for a mid so it's definitely a shield tanker, buff it's cap a little, see my comment on the hel as for it's rr bonus

Nag - please leave it's weapon config be, in my experience i've never had an issue with my dmg, in fact i routinely out dps'd the rest of my fleet with mine. that being said, i wont turn down a dmg buff since i dont get a bonus to torps anymore, a tracking buff would definitely be nice

Hel - buff it's raw shield hp a bit, take it from armor if you have to. while you can argue about the effectiveness of a pantheon fleet, no one in their right mind will ever do it with supers, swap the rr bonus for either drone tracking or for a jump cap/range bonus to put it in line with the minnie style.

Rag - still training for one, have no experience with em, so not really my place to say.


as for the slaves debate...



if you take a look at crystals, you'll notice that they have a little disclaimer that they dont work on capital mods, so i hardly doubt that it would be that big of a deal for ccp to make slaves not work on caps, and in doing so would bring the ehp of just about all supers into a pretty decent balance as several others have already attested to

No, there isn't. The Remote Repair Augmentor reduces remote armor repairer capacitor use. The Nanobot Accelerator does indeed reduce armor cycle time -- but it does so locally, not remotely.

I don't really understand why there is an issue with changing the Minnie dread to 3 turrets. I understand that re-modelling is hard work, but why not just have 2 turrets and give it a special ship bonus for 50% damage? Then remove the missile slots. Same thing as they did with Faction ships.

Naglfar- I would say ok as it is. Capless guns in itself is a great bonus.

Nidhoggur-swap low to midslot. 2 shield, 2 armor carriers it shall be.

Hel- repair bonus isn't all that great. Give it fighter velocity bonus instead. Less travel time->more effective DPS, inline with Minmatar design philosophy.

The titan, hm, no idea. Not a shipclass I'm interested in.

I dunno, the sig radius does make a pretty big difference. Would be good though.

As for the Rag it self, a comparable fit Vs an erebus can give it more DPS, more range and a higher tank?

IMO the Hel AND the Niddy should get a +x% drone/fighter tracking and +x% drone/fighter speed bonus, as well as buffing its shields as suggested above. 2 shield , 2 armor carriers 1 of each tank type for dps or defense (Thanny and Niddy offensive bonus, Chimmy and Archon defensive bonus) for regular carriers.

this is the answer to the implant question. Do you realize that passive regen on a capital and especially super captials is quite insane? The solution is to remove slave use in capital use, not making shield implants that 'do the same' which they don't - they will just break the system again and force a slave buff. . . this has been discussed in detail and the math is quite conclusive that this is alone will not work - it has to go hand in hand with looking at the high end officer and deadspace mods too. . . its more complicated then many hear seem to understand.

But this thread is about mini capitals so -->

Ok mini capitals - (I have an alt that is un-subed atm that uses them, I have had him for a month less then Ruah so he is an 04 character - so please - don't patronize me been here a lot longer then most)

1) Niddy - The problem with the niddy is not the buffer (although some will argue this), its the cap. Specifically it is the cap to rep balance, and the amount of rep it can do effectively before running out of cap. But to straight buff the cap would unbalance the ship since that cap can be used for other things and mini caps should have crappy cap - so - the solution is to give the niddy a 5% per level RR cap use in addition to the current 5% rep amount per level bonus making it 5% per level RR amount and cap use per level. Consider a light buff, say to 7.5% per level rep amount.

There are some debates about the slot layout, I would suggest returning the slot layout to its former 5/6/5 and shift a little of the armor to the shield (very slight) - make it a solid shield tanker.

2) Hel - Now the Hel is a lot more problematic because moms in general are kinda broken. But I would start by saying - that the same RR changes should be made for the Hel. And that it needs to be balanced with the Nyx in terms of tank, only with shields instead of armor.

Some people will suggest that the Hel get a FB tracking or speed bonus - while I think the recent changes but an end to that debate - please remember that like the TE changes that have essentially made ACs the most dominant 'does everything well' wepon system in the game (along with the more focused damage type changes), toying with tracking is almost always a very dangerous thing especially when considering that there is an explicit desire to make fighters and Fighter-bombers NOT do damage to smaller ships.

The idea that fighter and figher-bomber speed should be increased is also a misguided idea - specially when considering that the increased speed of the drone will inevitably reduce its damage once in orbit.

Ultimately, I know I chose Mini carrier and super carrier for my alt, knowing full well that it was inferior in tank and damage, because I believe that RR is a truly unique and viable way to fly these ships. It would be a terrible shame to let that flavor go and effectively standardize capitals for the short term - I feel it is much better to try to work the current bonus', make subtle changes, and see where that takes us before we scrap the entire racial flavor.

Other people here who trained minmatar did so for either RP-ish reasons (it looks cool, I am mini, I had mini BB 5 - all RP reasons) or for the RR. Everyone here knew that Minmatar capitals were always about being specialized support - to change that now would be a great step back.

Ruah

Alright, time for some easy problems/solutions and then some math. I'm going to make this a series of posts so that people can +rep and respond to the individual points.

First up are the Minmatar "normal" capital ships, the Naglfar dreadnought and the Nighoggur carrier.

Naglfar - Problem #1 - Split Weapons Systems

The Naglfar has split weapons systems due to the Minmatar storyline and general use of both missiles and projectile turret weapons. Unfortunately, because the Naglfar is FORCED to split weapons systems, that means that its pilots either spend a whole lot more time training missile and missile support skills, or are generally much less effective than their other dreadnought counterparts. This problem is exacerbated because of how heavily citadel torpedoes depend on extremely good missile support skills for range, explosion radius/velocity, and so on.

The reality is that the ability of some Minmatar ships to use missiles is a niche feature -- those aren't the primary focus of ships like the Huginn, the Typhoon, or the MInmatar battlecruisers. Since the vast majority of Naglfar pilots are coming from Tempest/Maelstrom fleet doctrines, it only makes sense to give the Nag a full rack of turret hardpoints.

Solution: Increase the turret hardpoints on the Naglfar to 3. People can fit it like a Typhoon-nought if they like, but mainline Tempest/Maelstrom pilots should not be forced to train capital missile skills.

Nidhoggur - Problem #2 - Shield vs. Armor Tanking, General Weirdness

The Nidhoggur is not a bad ship, but the ship's design with respect to its tank is pretty strange and arguably bad. Most Minmatar ships (and the other 3 capital ships) are optimally shield-tanked, but the Nidhoggur's slot layout is the same as the Thanatos (5 low 6 mid 5 high) rather than a layout more supportive of an active shield tank. The Nidhoggur also lacks the CPU to really fit an active shield tank because it has 15% less CPU than the Chimera and because Capital Shield Boosters take 4 times the CPU of a Capital Armor Repairer (as well as 60% of the power grid.) Even the Rorqual can fit a substantially superior shield tank to the Nidhoggur, which is strange. Finally, the Nidhoggur has equal amounts of armor and shield base HP, which is probably related to the "flavor" of the Minmatar race's split between shield and armor, but is an overall bad design choice.

Solution #1: Capital Shield Boosters don't need to take 4x the CPU of a Capital Armor Repairer. Either reduce the CPU cost or increase the CPU on the Nidhoggur to be more in line with the Chimera and Rorqual.

Solution #2: Pick either armor or shield tanking for the Nidhoggur, and change the base hitpoints to be in line with this decision. If that involves a change to shield-tanking, make the above fix and change the slot layout on the Nidhoggur to 5L/6M/5H, so that the mids and lows are inverted compared to the Thanatos.

Okay, now let's talk about shield-tanking as it applies to supercapitals. This is especially relevant to the Minmatar supercapitals, for reasons that I will get to -- basically Minmatar supercaps have weaker tanks than the Caldari supercaps (both using shields) and so the shield problems are much more pronounced for the Hel and Ragnarok.

Problem - A-Type EANMs vs Meta-13 Invulns

Every buffer-tanked ship in EVE makes heavy use of omni-resist modules to increase their across-the-board resists efficiently. For supercapitals, this means very-high-meta-level EANMs and Invulnerability Fields, which give massive bonuses to all resist types. Armor tankers, however, have access to Meta 13 EANMs from A-Type plexes of 3 pirate factions: Blood (Corpum), Sansha (Centum), and Serpentis (Corelum). Since these EANMs are of the medium loot level (Corpum instead of Corpus, Centum instead of Centus, Corelum instead of Core) that means that their "A-Type" modules drop from the 6/10 DED complexes and similar escalations from Blood/Sansha/Serpentis Base and Fortress signatures. (See http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Deadspace_items for more information on this drop system if you have questions.) This means that these A-Type EANMs are very widely available, typically going for 1.25B ISK on the open market (with 40+ on contracts) as of this writing.

By contrast, the "equivalent" module for shields is the meta 13 Invulnerability Field, which has no A-Type equivalent from Guristas or Angel complexes. The only meta 13 invulns are of officer origin (Vepas' Invulnerability Field) which current retails around around 12B ISK, with 2 available in Jita as of this writing. Pithum A-Type Invulnerability Fields should be dropping from Guristas' Base escalations and Guristas' Troop Reinvigoration Camps everywhere, but they don't even exist, meaning that shield-tanked supercapital pilots typically have to "downgrade" to Kaikka's or Caldari Navy-class invulns. (Kaikka's is Meta 11, costs ~3.2B, and is 13% less effective than Vepas'. CN Invulns are meta 9, cost 550M, and are 20% less effective than Vepas'.)

This leads to the following results. I have left fleet bonuses out for now since they don't matter for this comparison.

Hel, typical fit with Caldari Navy Invulns and 6% shield+regen implants: 30.5M EHP, 3669 DPS passive tank

Hel, fit with meta-13 Invulns and 6% shield implants: 36.2M EHP, 4431 DPS passive tank

Nyx, typical A-Type EANM fit, with Akemon's 8% armor implant: 24.3M EHP

Nyx, same as above, but with a full Slave set added: 35.9M EHP

The imbalances here should be clear. Let's compare the Aeon and the Wyvern:

Wyvern, typical Caldari Navy Invuln fit, 6% shield+regen implants: 43.3M EHP, 4670 DPS passive tank

Wyvern, fit with meta-13 Invulns, otherwise as above: 49.9M EHP, 5434 DPS passive tank

Aeon, typical A-Type EANM fit, with Akemon's: 37.0M EHP

Aeon, same as above, but will a full Slave set added:: 55.4M EHP

The results are, relative to each other, close to the same. Note that I have compared the Aeon and Wyvern (which have resistance bonuses) to each other as well as the Hel and Nyx (which have other bonuses instead of resistances.) The topic of the resist bonuses themselves, as well as the Hel's very bad bonus (to remote rep effectiveness) is a topic for another post.

Anyway, it is clear that the Slave set basically helps "make up for" the difference between Invulns and EANMs, but only if we allow Invulns of the same meta quality as the widespread A-Type EANM currently in use. This is an important change to help balance all shield-tanked supercapitals, especially the Minmatar Hel and Ragnarok. (Many Ragnarok pilots have moved to armor-tanking their titans because of this and other problems which I will get to soon.)

Solution #1: Add Gistum and Pithum C/B/A-Type Invulnerability Fields with statistics matching those of the Kaikka's/Thon's/Vepas' Modified Invulnerability Fields, which drop from Angel and Guristas 6/10 complexes and escalations from their Base and Fortress cosmic signatures.

Possible Solution #2: If the shield vs. armor EHP differential is still considered too high, consider either nerfing the Slave set *slightly* or adding only a Low-Grade Shieldguy implant set which would allow shield-tanked supercapital pilots to catch up.

Coming up next: Shield and armor data mechanics and fleet bonuses.

Edit: I have fixed this post to have more accurate Hel and Wyvern numbers, which essentially removes all complaint about the Slave set if the meta-13 invuln problem is fixed.

On the subject of meta-13 invulns, it is worth pointing out that a faction invuln gives a 37.5% resistance bonus. Even with all-5 compensation skills, you only get 35.4% from an a-type EANM. I know that one is active and one is passive, but...on a capital, the capacitor draw from a hardener isn't exactly the dominant factor in your capacitor consumption. The only real factor here is whether you can turn it off with energy neutralizers.

Just food for thought.